Seesmic Focuses On The Social Enterprise; Debuts Android, iPad Apps For Salesforce CRM

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Social application developer Seesmic is making a big move into the social enterprise and is debuting a dedicated Android app and iPad app for Salesforce’s CRM product (Windows Phone 7 will also be added soon), called Seesmic CRM. The Android app will be launched tomorrow morning at Salesforce’s annual conference, Dreamforce, and Seesmic will launch the iPad app in a few weeks.

For background, Seesmic, which was founded by French entrepreneur Loic Le Meur, helps you monitor and track the social web. Seesmic’s desktop, web, and mobile clients integrate with Twitter, Facebook and other social networks. The bonus of using an app like Seesmic is the ability to aggregate your streams from a number of social web services, like YouTube, Foursquare, Techmeme, LinkedIn and others.

But of late, Seesmic has been dabbling in the enterprise and launching more business-focused features. Last Fall, Seesmic launched a deep integration with Salesforce’s social network for the enterprise, Chatter. And then earlier this year, Salesforce led a $4 million round in Seesmic.

Basically the Seesmic CRM Android and iPad apps bring all the functionality of Salesforce’s CRM to mobile phones. Users can search their Salesforce.com account from the native apps; look up leads, contacts, accounts, related activities and chatter newsfeeds on the go; create and update leads, contacts, tasks, and events; log calls and emails after meetings; and much more. And the apps leverage the mobile OS; allowing users to see maps of their leads respective to their current location; upload photos and more. While pricing hasn’t been announced yet, Seesmic may charge $10 per month per user for the apps.

Le Meur tells us that he isn’t competing with Salesforce because the CRM giant currently doesn’t offer in-depth Android and iPad apps. In fact, Seesmic has been working ‘hand in hand’ with Salesforce’s mobile team to develop these native apps. And Salesforce is particularly bullish on the social enterprise of late—’Welcome To The Social Enterprise’ is the theme of Dreamforce this year. As Le Meur says, “We are working with Salesforce, not competing with the company.”

Of course, it is interesting that a Twitter-platform developer is shifting focus away from building for the consumer and focusing on the enterprise. In March, Twitter basically told developers to avoid competing with them on native clients. It’s not that Twitter doesn’t want developers to build off their platform, they just don’t want developers to build clients that mimic Twitter’s own services.

Thus, Seesmic has found a new user base in businesses. Le Meur explains that bringing mobile and social to the enterprise is the future for Seesmic. While the startup won’t give up its web and mobile apps (the company’s Android app has over a million users); all of Seesmic efforts are now fully ‘focused on bringing social to business users,’ says Le Meur.

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OverviewSalesforce is a global cloud computing company that provides business software on a subscription basis. It is best known for its on-demand customer relationship management (CRM) solutions. It offers users with a customer community, partner community, developer community, and an app exchange marketplace. Salesforce provides its products and services to various industries, including healthcare, finance, …

OverviewSeesmic is a powerful suite of social media management and collaboration tools that provide businesses and individuals with everything they need to build and manage their brands online.
With applications on [every platform](http://seesmic.com/products), including mobile devices, and a marketplace of over 80 third-party plugins, Seesmic is the most comprehensive solution on the market.
Seesmic …